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I have to say something here. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, then it was changed to bipolar disorder, then changed again to personality disorder. I really think that the medication caused a change in symptoms and that when I took medicine for depression it made the anxiety worse, and when I took it for anxiety it made the depression worse.
I honestly believe now that I was going through normal grief over the loss of loved ones, my mother and dad, my grandparents, all of whom were very important to me and who I had lived with and grew very close to had died.
I was abused by three different husbands, and had children to worry about. Social services stepped in and made our lives hell on top of everything else and gave me no time to experience and get through grieving in the proper way. I was expected to just "get over it."
It took a kind and understanding therapist who had known me before I was ill and he told me that if he didn't know any better, he would have thought I was retarded. The medication had slowed my speech down to the point I really sounded like I didn't have a lick of sense.
But even with all of this I was able to go to school and made the dean's list four times in a row and kept a 3.85 grade average. I had been told that I would always have to be on medication and that if I took anything like elavil or mood elevators it would cause me to flip out and that I had to have stabalizers like haldol and thorazine to keep me on an even keel.
I've taken every medicine known to man I think. They even had me on a drug that's used as a chemical restraint for especially violent prison inmates. It can cause you to break your own back because of the extreme muscle spasms it causes. This drug, prolixin is commonly given to people who have been diagnosed as manic and they don't always get the dosage right.
I've been put on the locked ward, put in the seclusion rooms and seen people get knocked across the room with ashtrays and some of the most terrible things you can imagine in these hospitals. So I can speak from experience that being mentally ill is a type of hell in itself. No one can know the full meaning of this without living it firsthand.
But after this therapist helped me figure out what was wrong with me and I had a total hysterectomy and recovered from it, I'm a walking miracle. I've come back from the brink of hell and lived to tell about it.
There is hope. You don't have to live through hell any more. They've made a lot of advances in mental health and can now treat it with a lot less invasive methods than they did twenty years ago. But they still will try different medications and it's not fun, but it's something you have to do to get better. You may not have to be medicated for the rest of your life. In my case, I gave my life over to the Lord and he took it away. And HE CAN take it all away. He loves you and wants nothing more than for you to be healthy and to prosper, but you can also know that he gives doctors the knowledge to help you. They wouldn't be able to do what they do if not for Him giving them the knowledge.
So hold on to your faith and give your life to God first of all, then let them help you. They are so much better at this now than they were back then.
I met some of the sweetest people in the hospital and these nurses were there for me and even helped me get to sleep at night. One of them even sat on the side of my bed and joggled it sort of like rocking me to sleep when I was having a fearful time of it.
Get the help you need and don't be afraid. They can help you to find the peace that you deserve.
It's worth every bit of trouble I went through to have this sense of peace that I have now. And I know if I hadn't gone through this I wouldn't understand it.
It's not easy when you're going through it, but it's worth it when you see that they're helping you.
Becky
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